


Paternal Benevolence

by JacksonBowman



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Angst, Dad Spy, Fluff, Other, Scout son, Team Bonding, Team Fortress 2 - Freeform, Team as Family, red team - Freeform, tf2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-19 21:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14246196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacksonBowman/pseuds/JacksonBowman
Summary: Scout's father has been dead for twenty five years. He had a fatherless childhood and still lives in bitterness because of it. Yet in some mysterious way he can't quite figure out, Spy is slowly beginning to fill the gap. It's almost as if Spy knows something about his father that he doesn't.





	1. The Beginning

Out of every briefcase he’d stolen, every payload he’d stopped, every control point he’d protected, this was the hardest battle to fight through. It came every year, yet somehow he was never prepared. It was a big, thwack to the gut like a baseball bat contrived of troubled childhood and repressed emotion. Scout hated Father’s Day with a long-cultivated passion. He was convinced that the idea of celebrating your father simply for existing was complete garbage. It was just a sick reminder every year of some guy he’d never gotten to meet.

  
Scout knew that his dad was dead because his mother had always told him this. The few times he’d tried to ask more about him, she’d suddenly been far too busy or tired to talk. Because of this, at age twenty five, he still knew nothing. What had his alleged dead father looked like? Sounded like? Smelled like? Scout didn’t know the answer to any of this, but did like to think that his father had smelled faintly of chewing tobacco and cologne. A nice, man-musk. He also liked to think that he took after his father in being a real stud. Although he’d never admit it, judging by the fact that he existed at all, his father had been better with the ladies than he was.

Scout hated his father. He didn’t know enough about him to despise his character, but simply hated him for being dead. Growing up there’d been this dark, aching gap in his life where a father-figure belonged. No one had ever shown up to fill that role, so Scout had eventually wrought bitterness out of molten despair. Every single Father’s Day growing up, the other kids at school would bring their dads in to show off. Every dad was different. Not all of them were good, but each one had existed. Whether or not they’d shown up at all, they _had_ existed.

  
This only fueled Scout’s bitterness with his dad, who’d been stupid enough to die.

  
On this particular Father’s Day, Red Team was sitting around indulging in some father-related conversation. Soldier, standing at attention, announced to no one in particular that his father had been a strong, red-blooded American.

  
Sniper, sitting atop a crate as he cleaned one of his favorite rifles, casually mentioned that his father had been the perfect image of an Australian man. He also wondered aloud why he didn’t take after him more.

  
Pyro shouted something muffled that was probably positive, judging by the lighter flicking on and off to a happy beat in their hand. ‘Their’ was the proper term here, because Pyro’s voice managed to sound both female and male in every mask-muffled consonant.

  
Heavy was too preoccupied with his gorgeous Sasha to engage in the conversation, so he simply grunted at the right intervals.

  
The Demoman slurred something negative about his father. Scout, who was not fluent in Drunk Scotsman, didn’t understand a word.

  
The Engineer was obsessively sorting some smaller crates by their brown hues as he spoke with Medic about his own father. Apparently he’d been a strict, no-funny-business man who’d always expected more out of his son than was possible.

  
Medic agreed and said that he could relate, since his father back in Germany had been a narrow-minded academic genius. He’d believed the most ridiculous things, such as studying to get an expensive medical degree rather than a degree in Ornithology. Medic did not specify which degree he’d ended up getting.

  
Scout sat on a crate near the doorway, having the oddest feeling that he was all alone despite being in a room full of people. The baseball in his hand did nothing to distract him from the talk, or the heavy reminder that he didn’t have anything to contribute. A tug of emotion in his gut told him to leave the room before the feeling consumed him. He did as it suggested.

  
No one missed Scout as he slipped through the doorway and into the hall, treading with light feet into a tiny, crowded storage room at the far end. A single, dangling bulb flickered on as he shut the door and flipped the nearby switch around which wires were exposed.

  
A moment of silence passed in which he sat on top of a crate, swinging his legs in an aimless way. It ended with a desolate sigh. Scout let his forehead rest in his hand, the other hand laying on his knee, still clutching the baseball. It was a limp, unenthusiastic grasp that didn’t have any suggestion of energy; just like the rest of him.

Scout hated himself for it, but his eyes misted over. It was this stupid day. Any other day he’d be able to suck those tears back up into their ducts out of pure, manly control. But right now Scout felt more like that lonely little boy picking gum off the bottom of a desk as everyone else flounced around with their dads. Not because gum-picking was a fun pastime or because, in retrospect, he'd been a pretty disgusting kid; but because it had been a distraction. He wondered if he'd still pick gum off a desk to distract himself. There weren’t any gum-bottomed desks around to test this on, so he settled for crying a little more. It wasn’t heavy, gross sobbing, but a couple of wet streaks down his face accompanied by sniffles. It damaged his pride a bit, but he’d managed to go years without doing anything stupid in front of the team (in his opinion) and wouldn’t start now. Imagine being caught crying like some little baby. Mercs’ didn’t cry.

  
Well, the Demoman’s second language was sobbing into a bottle, but no one cared when it was him.

  
Also, Scout once saw Heavy tearing up over a really good sandwich. But you couldn’t judge Heavy like that, he might tear you apart.

  
Scout had never exactly seen Soldier cry, but there had been some suspicious sweat trails coming from beneath his helmet when they’d watched an old WWII documentary.

Pyro... Probably felt some kind of emotion, but who was to say.

  
Oh, and there had been that one time he’d caught Medic getting misty-eyed over “what a good boy” Archimedes was for bringing him three severed fingers in mint condition. Scout had never told anybody about that last one, but couldn’t sleep without locking the window for weeks after that.

  
Regardless of who he’d seen cry and who he hadn’t, he still felt dumb right now. Thank God no one was here to see him. Here, in this crowded, dusty storage room with a million hiding places. Imagine how embarrassing that would be. Especially if someone could turn invisible and not even have to hide behind a bunch of crates. They could just stand directly in front of someone and get a great view of them crying. Thank Tom Jones that wasn’t a real ability that anyone on Earth possessed. Except for Spy, but he was back with everyone else, discussing fathers.

  
Wait.

  
“Whoa, hey! Wh-wha-what the hell, man?” Scout scrambled backwards, toppling off the back end of the crate he’d been sulking on. A smirking, angular man in a suit and well-fitted ski mask stood before him. Actually, upon second glance he wasn’t smirking right now. It was just so common that Scout had made the assumption. “Can’t a guy get some privacy?!”

  
“To cry?” Spy raised a brow. Not only was he not smirking, but it wasn’t implied in his voice that he wanted to. His usual taunting tone had been replaced by an almost saddened expression, if that was possible.

  
“What? No, of course not!”

  
“But here I am, watching you cry.”

  
“It wasn’t crying. It was only, like, two tears. That’s called something else. Like, uh... Not crying.”

  
“Right.” Spy hadn’t changed his posture once throughout this exchange, his arms held with a strict manner behind his back. “So you were sitting in here doing some Not Crying, because?”

  
Scout hesitated. He wasn’t sure how to word it, or if it was something that he even trusted Spy with. Spy was a wonderful collector and keeper of secrets, but also had the habit of opening his mouth whenever someone ticked him off. Not publically, but in a way that spread rumors around the team until no one was really sure where they’d first heard it. Spy, of course, was always innocent.

  
He considered remaining silent for a moment, but then... What was a little blackmail between teammates once in awhile? It boosted moral.

“It’s, uh... It’s Father’s Day. It’s just... I don’t know. I guess I might get a little upset every year because of my dad... kinda not existing. He’s dead.” Scout rubbed the back of his head in an awkward, stiff motion. “It’s just a dumb holiday, I don’t know why I still get bent out of shape over it. Hell, it isn’t even a real holiday.”

  
The corner of Spy’s mouth twitched downward momentarily. “Just a dumb holiday.”

  
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  
“So did I.”

  
“Yeah, you were... You were copying me.”

  
“Right. So, you have no father to speak of?” Spy leaned over, tapping the ashy end of his cigarette on to Scout’s hat. He gave a tiny smirk as Scout brushed it off in annoyance. The illusion of concern couldn’t last forever.

  
“Yeah, that’s right. You gonna go tell everyone now, or just use me as an ashtray?”

  
“Mmm, perhaps both.”

  
“Oh, that’s, that’s lovely. Thanks.” Scout grumbled. “I dunno why I bothered to tell you that. It’s not like you give a damn about me, or my dad.”

  
There was a moment of silence. Spy seemed to stiffen in the faint, almost unnoticeable way that a cat tenses itself when it hears something. The faintest flicker of additional shadow to his face as his mouth twitched once more. The softest light in his eyes as he leaned back just enough to let the overhead light bulb offer some of its electric yellow.

Within a mere couple of seconds the atmosphere in the room had changed almost entirely.

  
“Let’s go on a walk.” Spy lifted Scout to his feet by the scruff of his shirt, letting his shoes dangle an inch above the ground for a moment before dropping him.

  
“Uh, what?” Scout stumbled after him as they retreated out of the glorified broom closet. “What’d I do?”

  
“It’s just a walk, Scout. Can’t two men enjoy each other’s company? There are no clouds in the sky, you need to take your mind off of things, it’s a lovely temperature today—”

  
“It’s ninety eight degrees outside.”

  
“—It’s a lovely temperature today, and we are going to take a walk. For Father’s Day.”

  
“For what? Spy,” Scout trotted to keep up with his long strides. “Father’s Day has this whole thing about it, in the title actually, about celebrating your dad. I don’t got one of those. He’s kinda dead. Like, long ago dead. Six feet under ground, a skeleton, super dead kinda dead—”

  
Spy gave a sharp huff through his nostrils and a wave of his hand as if to say that this was nothing. “That will not stop us.”

  
“Um, yeah. Sure... Why so friendly all of the sudden?”

  
“Scout, please, what do you take me to be? Some kind of ruthless, backstabbing mercenary?”

  
“Those weren’t going to be my words, but actually...”


	2. The Game

“I don’t really feel like going. Some other time maybe.” Scout chewed his oatmeal with little interest.

The Demoman spat his morning whiskey out. “Ah’m sorry, but did you just say you _don’t_ want to go into town to cause some mayhem? I thought that was your favorite pastime!”

“I know I’m disappointing a lot of ladies, but nah, maybe some other time,” Scout’s eyes never left his gray-brown oatmeal. It wasn’t the most flavorful breakfast. “I’ll come some other time. I just don’t really feel like it today.”

“But... But we’re going to be knocking over mailboxes! An’ smashing beer bottles, an’ egging the mayor’s house an’—an’ there might be explosives involved if we run out of eggs! An’ there’s a pub in town, boy! _A pub_!”

Scout pushed his empty bowl away. “Yeah yeah. As amazing as it seems, I’m _not_ up to destroying the mayor’s house again right now. I just don’t feel like goin’ out today, ya know?” getting up from his seat at the crowded table, he left the room. Seven pairs of shocked eyes trailed after him, making him roll his shoulders in discomfort. Although it wasn’t spoken aloud, it was obvious that the answer was a unanimous “No, no I don’t know.”

It wasn’t easy being the peppy young guy of the group. The one day he just felt like lazing around, everyone was worried that something serious was up. If Scout of all people wasn’t feeling up to some senseless destruction, something was definitely wrong.

Or at least, that’s what the rest of the team thought. In reality Scout just wanted to go back to bed. It was 5:30 AM on a Saturday and the idea of getting the base to himself didn’t sound half bad. He wouldn’t have to hear Heavy’s snores or Sniper getting up to whiz various times throughout the night. Everyone would be gone, and while Scout was an extrovert through and through, every few years he found himself wanting for some alone time.

“See ya guys later! Pick me up some candy or somethin’!”

*******

Scout slept for a good two hours before waking back up. It was _luxurious_ ; a word used to describe something that induces intense relaxation, and doubled as one of the many words not found in Scout’s vocabulary. Had he known the word luxurious he would have applied it to the situation, probably misspelling it three different ways in the process. But regardless of whether or not he knew the word, he greeted the feeling by yawning and stretching. He rolled out of the pile of comic books and empty soda cans that he’d been sleeping in, beneath of which was probably a bed.

His ears perked, figure tensing. Laying on the cold floor, surrounded by bunk beds, he listened.

There was nothing. Just the gentleness of a desert breeze blowing through the floorboards, which he felt more than he heard. All was quiet. It was wonderful and terrifying at the same time. Scout couldn’t help but feel a little unnerved at the lack of explosions and raucous laughter.

Somehow it felt wrong to disturb the silence, so he crept out of the room, peering around each corner as if he were expecting an enemy to leap out at him. A silly thought perhaps, but he hadn’t met with this much nothingness in years. No one was here. _No_ one. Why, he could do anything. He’d never even considered what he could do without other people around, but now the possibilities were endless. He could run through the halls belting the lyrics to _Sex Bomb_ at the top of his lungs, _without_ getting death threats from his team. Now that, that right there was freedom.

Rounding the corner, he stopped dead in his tracks. Walking down the hall away from him, clad in impeccable red attire, was Spy. His gait suggested that he hadn’t noticed Scout.

Was he at breakfast earlier? Did he know that Scout was still here? It wasn’t unusual for Spy to stay behind. In Scout’s excitement he’d completely forgotten that Spy might still be here. Leave it to Spy to put a damper on things. But then there was the off chance that Spy didn’t actually know everything like he often claimed he did, and wasn’t aware of Scout’s presence.

A crooked grin spread across Scout’s face. Scout was buddies with just about everyone on the team. They threw darts and cracked jokes and shot BLU team together—the usual friend stuff. But Spy had never been included in that, usually keeping to his smoking room or wherever else offered peace and quiet. Presented with such a wonderful opportunity, Scout sought to test his boundaries.

*******

Spy walked down the hall with smooth, swift strides, posture perfect and feet pointed straight. This was broken when the force of a very large cat landed on his shoulders, causing him to stumble every which way as his cigarette flew from his mouth and died a smoky death on the floor.

A gleeful voice shouted from above his head, just before the figure leapt from his shoulders. “ _Gotcha!_ ”

Scout, who was very much not a cat, landed nimbly in front of Spy before turning to face him. He watched in amusement as Spy furiously brushed down his suit, huffing angry breaths. Scout didn’t speak French but knew that he shouldn’t greet anyone in France with the words Spy was throwing out right now.

“What,” hissed Spy through gritted teeth. “The _hell_ was that? Aren’t you supposed to be with everyone else, playing Russian Roulette or something else equally ludicrous?”

Scout wasn’t deterred in the slightest by Spy’s angry tone. It brought him a feeling not unlike triumph. “Nah, we only play that on Tuesdays now because Medic said he was tired of cleanin’ us up. But thanks for asking!” he beamed.

Spy gave him a look of annoyance. Straightening his tie and his posture in one swift movement, he strode forward so that Scout was in his literal shadow. It was in a menacing voice that he spoke. “And _why_ did you jump on me?”

“It’s called rough-housing. You should look it up sometime. Sometimes people fight, but with this mutual understanding that they’re doing it for fun.” the sarcasm was strong in Scout’s voice as he offered up Jazz hands.  

Spy bared his teeth, eyes glinting. He didn’t seem to take well to this. “I am the _image_ of thoughtful! The _embodiment_ of mystery! The masked agent _filled to the brim with secrets!_ ”

“And?”

“ _And_ I am on my way to the kitchen!”

Scout burst into laughter. “Okay pally.” he gave Spy a generous pat on the back. “We can get food together then. I’m kinda hungry too.”

“I’m not eating any of your food.” Spy spat.

“Oh, right, you’re too good for that.” Scout gave a breathy laugh. “Good thing I’m here to keep you company. You looked awfully lonely walkin’ down that hall.”

“Alone and lonely are two different things.” muttered Spy.

“Yeah yeah.” Scout wasn’t exactly listening, but he was interested. “Maybe let’s not get food right now. How about a game! It’s one you’ll like, I promise. We can play until we both collapse from hunger.”

“I highly doubt that I would play anything with you for that long.”

“Awesome! What do you think of Hide-and-Go-Seek... _Tag_?” a crooked grin had taken up residence on Scout’s face.

Spy blinked down at him. He seemed so surprised that he’d forgotten to look disgusted. Once enough time had passed that things were getting awkward, Spy murmured half to himself. “I’m going to beat you.”

It wasn’t the kind of “I’m going to beat you” that suggested the person saying it was feeling competitive. It was the type of “I’m going to beat you” that suggested the person saying it knew full well that they were going to beat you, and couldn’t work out why you would ever put yourself in such a situation.

Scout did not pick up on this. “That’s the spirit! I’ll count first and you can—”

“No,” blurted Spy, snapping out of his daze. “Do you really have no understanding of your own mortality? _I_ will count first so you can get some pitiful version of a head start. You are setting yourself up for failure!”

Scout’s grin widened until it was goofier and sloppier. “That’s what my teachers used to say!”

Before Spy could say anything more, Scout shot down the hall like a bullet, bouncing with every step. The confidence he felt in his ability to beat Spy was perhaps foolish, but almost admirable. Most people dreamed of having even half the self confidence that Scout had, even if they weren’t very fond of him in particular.

Spy felt like an idiot doing so, but closed his eyes and began to count. Deciding that he wanted to spend as little time as possible playing this game, he settled for twenty.

Those twenty seconds seemed to stretch into millenia. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten roped into this, or if he’d actually agreed to it. Was there really any need, or could he slip away and let Scout wait around for some ungodly amount of time? It _would_ give him some peace and quiet, but a tiny, guilty corner of his conscience urged him not to do so.

Opening his eyes, he looked around. No red-adorned, messy-haired young man was to be seen. Not even the stirring of dirt on the floor indicated where he may have gone. Striding down the hall with silent steps, Spy faded into the background as if he were made of the dusty particles that floated in the light of the windows.

He rounded the corner, looking for obvious signs of Scout. Scout was always blatant, even on the battlefield. His dog tags jingled and his sneakers skidded around corners with obnoxious squeaking noises, usually followed by a boyish giggle or taunting remark. But right now Spy was surprised to find a serious lack of Scout.

A shadow flickered above him to his right, and Spy’s eyes snapped around to meet it. Among the rafters was Scout. His knees were bent in a crouch, figure still as stone as he scanned the hallway for any signs of Spy. Unable to identify anything, he turned and crept down the rafters without a sound, not stirring so much as a dust bunny in his path.

It hit Spy like a sickening punch to the gut from an opponent much larger and stronger than himself. It was in the way Scout held himself, the manner in which he moved, the way his eyes studied every inch of the room. The very ripple of his shoulders beneath his shirt sent Spy’s stomach into turmoil.

It was like looking into a mirror.

For a moment Spy found himself unable to move, feeling as if he’d just accidentally swallowed an ice cube that was now slowly freezing him from the inside. His stomach pooled with icy horror and guilt. The kind of deep, horrible guilt that could only be created by being suppressed and denied into a dark corner of his conscience for decades. Out of all the people he’d assassinated, no death haunted him as much as the living mistake he’d made twenty five years ago.

He wanted to turn and walk away from the unsettling sight, but this time something kept him there. Letting his invisibility slip away, he called out in a voice that was much stronger than he felt. “Found you!”

Scout groaned, leaping down from the rafters. The lightness with which he landed struck a painful chord somewhere within Spy’s chest.


End file.
